by Jonathan Skinner

Cape May
Dendroica tigrina

your sharp, slightly decurved
chestnut and gold horns
striped at the throat black
streaks speak sheets, seethe sleet
puncture grapes drink juice
defend the flowering plants
on volcanic hills I court you
tigress with rigid wings
touching the patch of yellow
behind ears, your spruce –fir’s
smooth vine stems pitching
me buzzy with flight

American Redstart
Setophaga ruticilla

butterflies, flitting, drops wings
he he he he him I’ll like
bright orange crescents,
yellow flash – patches
well I’ll well I’ll well I’ll
spread a Japanese tail fan
and just cool myself off here
birch bark feathers lichens line
the nest, cozy as can be

by Jonathan Skinner

Some wings lift skyward
testing the airs, circle round
and wait — feeling for
pressure shifts, advancing fronts
spiraling in anti – clockwise
dropping rain and cold
night after is migration time
to catch the northerly
& shoot south between teeth
of cyclone meshing anti –
cyclone, mixing streams of hot
and cold — swooping south /
southeast in waves and swarms

Down the Niagara river they come
across Lake Erie from Long Point or Pelee,
Toronto or Detroit
swarming along the shore
through thickets, wetlands and backyard
corridors, or soaring on high
in bubbles rising from the heated land
some seek the highlands and hemlocks
and many stay out over water, skim low
stop for rest in the marshes

Rolling world’s tumbled giant
universes aching spilt grammar
birds remount the tender night
cyclones churn in cut – off masses
frontal depressions ease migraines
lickety – splits of swirl horizon
grouped ungrouped, swiftly rising
wilderness touches wingtip crouches
sands delight middle blearing

Flightways overlap breeding grounds leapfrog other grounds
some geese breed or winter here others pass through
thrushes stay high seek cool woodlands
Alleghany Appalachians to deciduous Georgia
many head for the mighty Mississippi basin
from suburb to suburb (watch out for felines)
swamp to swamp and river to river or lake
and cornfield to cornfield
following the refuge archipelago

from Iroquois or Montezuma in New York
to Pennsylvania’s Erie or Hawk Mountain
to Ottawa in Ohio
skip the gauntlet of Kentucky to Tennessee:
Chickasaw, Cross Creeks, Hatchie, Lake Ison, Reelfoot
and down along the Mississippi

stops at Sandhill Crane, Choctaw to the Gulf
& splendid Louisiana (“Pelican State”) coast:
Atchafalaya, Cameron Prairie, Lacassine, Sabine,
Tensas River, Barataria
follow the Ohio & Wabash rivers,
with perhaps a wander on the Tennessee, White or Red
to west or to east, stray over to the Pearl, the Alabama
the Coosa or Tombigbee — hard to get lost
on such a straightforward route,
all rivers dump into the same warm Gulf

at 20 or 30,000 ft. on a clear night
follow the beacons, from glow to glow
of cities with their sprawling suburbs:
Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Pittsburgh,
Columbus, Cincinnati, Louisville, Nashville,
Memphis, Jackson, Baton Rouge, New Orleans

glean the rich waters from Pensacola Bay
through bays Mobile, Boudreau, Eloi, Black, Crabe, Quarantine,
Grand, Blink, Barataria, Caminada, Terrebonne, Atchafalaya,

East and West Cote Blanche to Vermilion Bay
fish the sounds, preen and wade or prepare to cross
or just fly right over, on into the long crossing
rays of iridescent bird fat, burning across the Gulf

by Elizabeth Hoover

Photography is an oath to silence, so I gave up
on faces one summer in Lanesville.  The light wrapping
her body like a sweet nurse in an old play.  It curled
around her breast so you knew from looking how
it felt to pass your palm over it, to hold its weight
in your hand.  There was something else, something
she held just behind her eyes.  I never captured it
though I took dozens of rolls and soothed the red screen
wicker left on the back of her legs with my tongue.
But you want me to talk of this photo here —
a sign painter bending to wet his brush — a neat
compositional trick with a black stripe —
I think I loved her, even if it was just
from behind my pocket – sized wall of glass.

by Matthew M. Cariello

Then I knew one word,
birthright’s rudiment
uttered in hunger’s warm room.
The sense of me without sense.
I would have finished life then,
but, perfectly happy, but
the room collapsed
when by morning I lay
among the broken trees
beyond the open frame,
and it came creeping through
the burnished leaves:
not me, not hunger.
I named the thing
the name it gave
itself, the sound it
made just being there,
heard it first time
clear as another’s word.
Deep in the branches
of morning the memory
of birds calling.

. . .

When she found me clinging
to the screen two stories up,
she would swallow her panic,
hold my shoulders tight,
and ask me to say what I saw.
If I knew no names, she pointed
and named for me.  And so
articulation was first
folded in words my mother
said: hedge ivy bricks
chestnut alleyway gate
trees bucket.  Yet an invisible
counterlife chattered
in my ear as she spoke:
car, yes, but car running,
clothesline’s cry; I heard in rain
the downspout’s talk,
traffic lights traded
colors, birds held up
the shining wires.  That
was the word, the word
was that that was them.
Late afternoons, the backyard
was half in shadow half in sun
and broken puddles etched
contradictory houses and
there were more bricks in a wall
than were possible to count
and the iron gate squealed
secrets and an airplane
droned my name.  I’d sit
in the window and sob,
cradled by my mother
as the large world surged.